1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and method for extracting a frame included in moving image data as still image data and performing processing to the extracted frame.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, moving images can be easily captured by digital cameras or digital camcorders. The captured moving image data can be recorded and stored in a recording medium such as a digital versatile disk (DVD) or downloaded to a PC.
The moving image data is composed of a plurality of consecutive frames. That is, moving images are successively captured as plural frames to generate moving image data. Then, a frame of the plural frames constituting the moving image data can be extracted and used as still image data.
For example, a desired scene can be extracted as still image data from moving image data which was captured by a digital camera while traveling. The extracted image can be developed as a printed photograph to be included in a physical travel album. Further, in addition to moving image data captured by a user, a screen frame displayed on TV may be extracted from moving image data sent as information programs, and printed.
However, in such cases, a user needs to perform a troublesome task to retrieve a frame corresponding to a desired scene from a number of frames included in moving image data. In particular, if the moving image data is of long duration, a lot of time can be wasted retrieving a frame which is to be extracted.
To solve the above problems, a printing flag can be previously set to a particular frame in moving image data (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-229237, for example).
That is, the printing flag is set to a frame when it is detected that image content is greatly changed between frames, or a predetermined period is elapsed at the time of capturing moving images with a digital camera. The printing flag is intended to help a user to retrieve a desired frame when printing the frame later.
However, if the printing flag is set in the above-described manner, the following problem may occur. That is, in the above-described technique, a flag is automatically set while capturing moving image data, so that the flag is not necessarily set to a frame that the user most likely wants to print.
Further, since the flag is set only based on photographing conditions or contents of moving image data, when a user actually prints a desired frame later, information regarding a printing operation is not retained. That is, after the user extracts still image data from a predetermined frame in moving image data and prints the image, if the user desires to extract and print the same still image data again, a troublesome task needs to be performed to retrieve a desired frame.